ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 149 



Dialexes of Maximus Tyrius. This Platonic philosopher 

 lived in Rome, under Commodus. The situation of his 

 Atlas is "on the continent, where the Western Lybians 

 inhabit a projecting peninsula. The mountain has in it 

 towards the sea a semicircular deep abyss. The precipices 

 are so steep that- they cannot be descended ; the abyss below 

 is filled with trees, and " one looks down upon their summits, 

 and on the fruits which they bear, as if one was looking into 

 a well." (Maximus Tyrius, viii., 7, ed. Markland.) The 

 description is so graphic and so individually marked, that it 

 doubtless conveys the recollections impressed by a real 

 prospect. 



( 23 ) p. II. "The Mountains of the Moon. Djebel al 

 Komr." 



The Mountains of the Moon of Ptolemy (Lib. iv. cap. 9,) 

 (creXrjvrjQ opoe) form on our older maps an immense unin- 

 terrupted mountain zone, traversing Africa from east to 

 west. The existence of these mountains appears certain; 

 but their extent, their distance from the Equator, and their 

 general direction, are all unsolved problems. I have already 

 alluded in another work, (Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 191, and note 

 297, Engl. ed.) to the manner in which a closer acquaintance 

 with Indian languages, and with the ancient Persian idiom, 

 the Zend, teaches us that part of the geographical nomen- 

 clature of Ptolemy forms an historic monument of the 

 commercial connection of the west with the most distant 

 regions of Southern Asia and Eastern Africa. The same 

 direction of ideas shews itself in a question very recently 



